Why Lily Really Hates James
by HermioneGirl96
Summary: Lily and Sev were best friends until Sev blew her off one time too many. Then Lily started hanging out with the Marauders, who turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to her. Or were they? Canon; one-shot.


**Disclaimer: It's J. K. Rowling's. **

**A/N: This is a one-shot. I've got a bunch of ideas that I could someday use to expand on this, but that's unlikely to happen before next summer at the earliest. I hope you can live with just this for right now. Enjoy!**

Until fourth year, Severus Snape was my best friend in the world.

It could have gone on like that, too, if it hadn't been for that stupid day in October. October 24th, 1973. I had way too much homework and I'd had too much every night for two weeks, and, for the first time in my life, I was behind on my workload. As a top student who prided herself on her spotless report card, this was causing a crazy amount of stress. On top of that—or perhaps because of it—I had just, for the first time in my life, failed a test. Not just gotten an Excellent or an Acceptable instead of my usual Outstanding, but I'd gotten a Troll. For someone who practically lives on grades, that's unthinkable. It's the end of the world.

It's really not a good time for your best friend in the world to blow you off.

I was coming down the stairs from Transfiguration and Sev was heading up the same staircase on his way to Defense against the Dark Arts. Just as we were coming within range of each other, at the point when we would have greeted each other and I would have started confiding in him about my terrible day, some Slytherins came onto the staircase behind me.

Sev and I were generally pretty discrete about our friendship when other people from our houses were around, but we always at least said hi. It wasn't a secret that we hung out—even that we were really close. We just tried not to present too much of a target when we could help it.

This time, though, Sev didn't even look at me.

He told me later that he'd been getting a bunch of flack from his Slytherin friends about hanging around with me, and now wasn't the time to be really overt about our friendship. He said it wasn't his own safety he was worried about—he thought they might try to hex me or beat me up. He said he ignored me for my own protection.

On that particular day, though, I really didn't care.

I was furious. More than that, I was hurt beyond description. I skipped lunch and went and sobbed in my dormitory. Eventually, though, I had cried myself out. I had tons of work to do and far too little time to do it, but at that point I really couldn't bring myself to care. For the first time ever, I was going to deliberately procrastinate.

I wanted revenge on Sev, and I wanted to de-stress. Almost immediately, I came up with a ridiculously simple way to kill two birds with one stone: I would go hang out with the Marauders.

While Sev and I were friends, we hated the Marauders. Together, we picked apart their flaws and made fun of them behind their backs. The enmity was far from one-sided, however. Indeed, the Marauders started it—they picked on Sev before we even got to Hogwarts for our first year. From that very first train ride on, they made it their hobby to bully, tease, hex, and torture Sev. Nothing we did could avenge all the hurt they'd caused him, so I'd never felt guilty about the way we judged them and laughed at them and hated their guts.

But I'd heard from my roommates that the Marauders really knew how to make you forget your troubles, that they were a ton of fun, and that they knew how to party anytime, anywhere.

That, and the fact that hanging out with them would make Sev furious, convinced me to seek them out.

Being with the Marauders was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. James and Sirius were, I swear, the _funniest_ boys on the planet. Within seconds of joining them—to a host of raised eyebrows but no comments—I was laughing harder than I'd laughed in years. Sure, a lot of their jokes were kind of cruel, and some of the people they were making fun of didn't deserve to be humiliated—but honestly, in the mood I was in, the crueler, the better. It was satisfying to watch the Marauders defame someone. It assuaged the fury I felt toward Sev.

After that, I hung out with the Marauders whenever I got the chance. That wasn't necessarily that often—the fourth-year workload was a lot bigger than the third-year one had been, and, overall, I was still a responsible student—but, when I had a free hour, I spent it with James, Sirius, and the girls my age who flocked around them, rather than seeking out Sev or hiding with a book. While I occasionally had moral qualms about the stuff the Marauders got up to, I found that I was a lot happier hanging out with such fun-loving people.

James asked me out after I'd been hanging around him and Sirius for a couple months. I was a little surprised—of all the girls he could go for, he wanted me? Even so, I rejected him. Even though he was popular and good-looking, I didn't feel anything for him beyond a bit of friendly compassion and a measure of gratitude for the way he had brightened my past few months.

Even though I'd rejected him, James and I became friends as fourth year progressed. It wasn't _just _James and me. I also became friends with Sirius, Remus, and Peter, too, as well as becoming a lot closer to the other girls in my year than I ever had been before. I was enjoying being a Gryffindor more than I ever had before getting to know them, and life was looking pretty good.

Fifth year was a more intense version of the same. It was O.W.L. year, meaning that I had less time to hang out but even more need of relaxing hours spent hanging around with the popular crowd of my year.

In spring of fifth year, right before our Easter vacations, James asked if I'd like to come to the huge party he threw annually on the Friday before we came back to school. He said the other Marauders and all the Gryffindor girls my age would be there, along with a lot of other Gryffindors from the surrounding years and some Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws, too, as well as Hogwarts graduates who had played Quidditch with James a few years ago.

I'd had a tendency to avoid the Gryffindor parties that the Marauders had thrown after Quidditch wins because, even since I'd started hanging out with the Marauders, I still had no interest in drinking or in being around a bunch of drunken teenagers. Even so, I realized that it was nice of James to invite me, and I figured that, at a party that big, I couldn't be the _only_ one not drinking. Besides, if I didn't like it, I could leave. If I did like it, well, it would take my mind off of the O.W.L.s for a few hours, at least.

I told James he'd see me there, and he gave me a packet of Floo Powder so I could get to his house.

I never should have gone to that party.

It started out well enough. There was music turned up loud and everyone was eating, dancing, drinking, or doing some combination of the three. I'd never really been to a proper dance before—when I'd finished primary school, there had been something _called_ a dance to celebrate the occasion, but ten-year-olds just aren't that good at that sort of thing. What I hadn't anticipated was how much I _loved_ to dance. Without even having to think about it, I knew what to do. I danced with James, Remus, Sirius, and some other Gryffindor guys. When no one asked me to dance, I found one of the circles of other people without partners and we all danced together. I was having the time of my life.

Then James found me again. "Lily, you look amazing," he breathed, seeming beside himself. His face was flushed. Was it from alcohol, or just from dancing? He seemed to be speaking clearly enough.

I blushed and looked down at myself. I was wearing a tight green dress that ended farther above my knee than my parents really liked. The neck was cut low enough to be pleasing but not utterly scandalous. I was wearing strappy high heels—but not so high that I couldn't dance easily—and my hair was up and pinned in some fashion that sounded weird but looked really good in actuality. Petunia had agreed to do my hair. For years, we hadn't been on very good terms with each other, but she loved arranging hair too much to resist even when it came to me—and she had talent.

"Thanks," I said to James. "You look pretty decent yourself."

That was the understatement of the century. James was dressed up—we all were; the invitations had specified that the party was on the formal side—but I'd never seen anyone look as good in a suit as he looked just then. Maybe it was the way the dark jacked complimented his hair, which was exactly the same shade—or how his hair, sticking up in all directions, contrasted with the formal jacket in a way that was just amusing enough to make me smile. Or maybe it was how sophisticated he looked, or the way his breathless grin sapped all the sophistication away.

I don't know what it was, but James Potter looked _good_.

"So, Lily, can I steal you for this dance?"

I agreed. "With pleasure."

As we danced, I noticed how we each anticipated the other's movements, we moved in rhythm with one another, we _fit_. He wasn't like the other guys, who stepped on my toes or, in Remus's case, moved too stiffly to really make me comfortable. Dancing with James was perfect.

While we danced, we talked. I told him how nice his house was—which wasn't small talk; his house was mind-blowingly huge and well-decorated—and he told me how it had been in his family for centuries and sometimes he felt guilty about having it when he didn't do anything to deserve it and neither did anyone else who lived there. We chatted about school and O.W.L.s and his latest prank, and the song seemed to stretch on forever as we moved in perfect harmony and made conversation to match.

Then, when the song finally ended, James asked, "Will you come with me?"

"To where?" I replied.

"You'll see. Just follow me, all right?"

I shrugged, ready for an adventure. "All right."

We left the main room where everyone was eating and drinking and dancing and wound our way through corridor after corridor and up multiple staircases. At last, James took me through a door that led onto a balcony and spread an arm before him as if to say, Look; isn't it beautiful?

It was. We were far away from any big cities, so all the stars were visible. The night was clear and only a bit chilly, as it was the middle of April. Below the balcony lay a valley; across from us was a small mountain. The moon illuminated several streams running down the slope into the valley, seeming like gleaming silver ribbons at this distance. After perhaps a minute I tore my eyes from the scene before me to look at the boy who had brought me here. "Oh, James, it's lovely."

James reached up and traced a finger down my cheek. "So are you, Lily." Then, before I knew what he was doing, he stepped closer to me and put his mouth on mine and kissed me.

Yes, I'd enjoyed dancing with him. Yes, we were friends. Yes, I thought he looked really good that night. But NO, thank you very much, I did NOT want him to kiss me!

For another thing, I could taste the alcohol in his mouth. Maybe he didn't even care about me like that. Maybe he wouldn't have kissed me if he'd been sober.

I needed to get out of here.

I extricated myself from James, which was a job in and of itself because he'd wrapped his arms around me. Then I turned, stormed off, and promptly realized that I had no idea how to get back to the dance floor.

There was nothing for it but to go back to the balcony and confront James.

"You had no right to do that!" I screamed as soon as I reached him, so that he wouldn't read anything into my return.

"Didn't you like dancing with me, Lily?" James asked.

"That doesn't mean I have feelings for you! It just means you're a good dancer!"

"C'mon, Lily, why don't you like me? I'm popular, I'm a starter on the Quidditch team, I—"

"That's not what attraction's made of, James!" I shouted. "It's made of feelings and—and—and attraction! It's not about _credentials_! It's not some sort of _equation_! I _know_ you're popular. For that matter, you're smart, you're hot, you're the most fun out of all the guys I've ever met, you're funny, you're great at getting me to de-stress, you're a good dancer, you make good conversation . . . but the thing is, I don't want to be more than friends with you. I don't know _why_, but that's how I feel, and it's not up to you or me or anybody to try to change that!"

"You sure?" James asked. And then I knew that, steady though he was, he was really drunk—because he kissed me _again_.

"You don't get to _do_ that!" I shouted. "Take me back to the rest of the party right now so I can go home! I never want to see you again!" I knew that was a little drastic, since I really did enjoy having James as a friend—but when you tell a guy to stop it and he doesn't, that's just not cool. There are some things that guys need to respect, and a girl's right not to be kissed is definitely one of them. If a guy can't respect that—well, then maybe he's not as good of a friend as you thought.

"Lily, you don't mean that, do you?" James asked, leaning in for yet another kiss.

"How _dare_ you?" I shrieked. "Take me back _now_ or I _swear _you'll regret it!"

James did as I said (finally) and I found someone at the party to take me home by side-along apparition. Once home, there wasn't much to do. I was far too worked up to sleep, but all of my friends were at the party, so I couldn't call anyone for advice. Instead, I took the pins out of my hair and changed out of the tight dress and high heels into my pajamas. Then I wondered something I hadn't wondered in a while: How was Sev doing?

I resolved to find out on Monday.

One thing I knew for sure: Sev was right about James Potter.

**A/N: Reviews are lovely! **

**P.S. This is a one-shot.**


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